For the past six months, a group of parents has been petitioning the Brea Olinda school board to change a school name they say represents a racist past.

But the grandson of former Superintendent William E. Fanning disputes the assertion his grandfather – for whom the elementary school is named – belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, and a report from the Brea Historical Society’s curator argues there’s no evidence Fanning shared the group’s bigotry or did anything discriminatory.

At a school board meeting Monday, more than a dozen residents urged the board to rename William E. Fanning Elementary School as a rejection of what resident Jeff LeTourneau called the city’s “checkered past” of intolerance, racial discrimination and de facto segregation.

Board members have not publicly responded to residents’ concerns, and several did not return a reporter’s calls requesting comment.

On Wednesday, board member Bill Hall said he’s keeping an open mind until he hears from everyone who wants to weigh in, adding, “I don’t know that people who are out there are all aware of what’s being asked.”

Superintendent Brad Mason said the Fanning school name may appear on an upcoming meeting agenda.

“It’s an issue that obviously the board is being asked to address and deal with and will need to be addressed,” he said.

Fanning Elementary – named in the 1970s for a principal and superintendent who served the district from 1914 to 1942 – is the only campus in the Brea Olinda Unified School District named for a person. Others are named for geographic or historic places.

Around the 1920s, “the Klan hit its zenith in the United States,” with more than 4.5 million members, said Brian Levin, director of Cal State San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. The KKK was also prominent in Orange County.

The group billed itself as a civic organization that would bring morality back to society, Levin said.

The Klan “stood as self-proclaimed bulwarks against rising immigration, particularly of Catholics and Jews, but also with respect to cultural changes as well as political changes,” he said.

Parent Mike Rodriguez learned of Fanning’s purported KKK connection last summer. Considering enrolling his son at Fanning Elementary, Rodriguez was researching the school and found an article about past Orange County Klan members that was based on a list in the Anaheim Heritage Center’s archives.

Rodriguez started an online petition – now at 955 signatures – asking the school board to change the school’s name, and he and other residents began showing up at board meetings.

One of them is Wendy Dotan, a high school teacher whose two children once attended Fanning Elementary. She said her son and daughter, one now in high school and the other in college, previously experienced anti-Semitic behavior – the family is Jewish – in school.

Dotan wants the school name changed, she said, adding, “It is not OK today and does not reflect the demographics of the community today.”

But to Brea Historical Society curator Linda Shay, who prepared the report on Fanning for the district, the case for saying Fanning was a Klan member is flimsy at best.

The list of supposed KKK members that includes Fanning’s name is of unknown origin, Shay said, and another list – cited by an academic paper as being in the Library of Congress – has not been found. The list in the Anaheim archives is untitled, but accompanies another list referencing the KKK – Fanning’s name isn’t on the other shorter list.

Shay said after reading old school board minutes and historic copies of the local paper, “We could find no evidence that Mr. Fanning acted in a prejudicial or bigoted or disparaging manner.”

Such evidence isn’t always easy to find. The Klan was once prominent – one Anaheim rally in the 1920s reportedly attracted 20,000 people – but also hidden, as shown by the nickname “the invisible empire.”

Cal State San Bernardino’s Levin said not everyone was vocal about their membership. “Oftentimes families have found up in the attic, ‘Oh, Grandpa was a member of the Klan.'”

William Fanning, grandson of the former superintendent, said that’s exactly what didn’t happen in his family.

When his father died, the younger Fanning inherited his grandfather’s archives. He pored through letters, reports, newspapers and photos and found “not one scintilla of evidence” of Klan membership or activity, he said.

Fanning said his late father told a Cal State Fullerton oral history researcher the elder Fanning opposed the KKK, and his aunt recalled a gentle, loving man who “couldn’t have been involved in something like that.”

“I think as a family, we’re focusing on the person that we knew,” Fanning said. “Anybody can make allegations, but it doesn’t mean that they’re truthful or valid or provable.”

But residents – who brought a banner to the school board meeting that read, “No more racist tributes in our schools” – may be digging in their heels. Several told the board it’s an opportunity to “be on the right side of history.”

After hearing the family found nothing in William Fanning’s personal papers that suggested Klan membership, Dotan said, “It was a secret society. There wasn’t a lot of documentation. It’s not enough to exonerate him completely for me.”

Alicia Robinson covers Anaheim for The Orange County Register. She previously spent 10 years at The Press-Enterprise writing about Riverside and local government as well as Norco, Corona, homeless issues, Alzheimer's disease, streetcars, butterflies, horses and chickens. She grew up in the Midwest but earned Southern California native status during many hours spent in traffic. Two big questions Alicia tries to answer in stories about government are: how is it supposed to work, and how is it working?

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